Racing
Investec Derby Day at Epsom, plus Sandown
EXTRAORDINARY times produced an extraordinary Investec Derby at Epsom on Saturday, 4 July, when 25/1 shot Serpentine made all the running under Emmet McNamara to win the 241st edition of the Classic, giving trainer Aidan O’Brien a record eighth victory.
The Galileo colt had only booked his ticket for the race – a month later than normal – a week earlier when winning a 1¼-mile Curragh maiden by nine lengths.
Filled with confidence by O’Brien, McNamara set off as if he were there for another reason – namely pace-making. However, the other jockeys seemed to mistake the “hare for a rabbit” and allowed him an easy, lengthy lead – swinging for home he was at least 15 lengths clear.
As you might expect, Serpentine did tire but they never caught him and he came home in splendid isolation, 5½ lengths clear of 50/1 chance Khalifa Sat, under Tom Marquand, in second – a position he had also filled throughout the race.
Behind Khalifa Sat they were all in a heap. O’Brien’s maiden Amhran Na Bhfiann was third, 2000 Guineas winner Kameko was fourth, having failed to get the trip, and English King – his inexperience telling from a bad draw – finished in fifth.
The only novelty about this O’Brien winner was the jockey. Son of a racehorse trainer,
McNamara, 30, was a two-time pony-racing champion and champion apprentice jockey. But he struggles with his weight and forsook riding out elsewhere in the hope of a crumb – on the days when Ballydoyle had half a dozen in a Classic – to spill from the plates of jockeys Ryan Moore and Seamie Heffernan.
“I didn’t expect to be sitting here,” said the winning jockey. “However, Aidan filled me with a huge amount of confidence, so it’s not a complete surprise. He said that if things worked out well, he was one horse who could win the Derby. He instilled that into me and I believed him, because when that man tells you something about a horse, you believe him.
“I thought I was getting quite an easy lead and I couldn’t hear a thing all the way through the race. I never looked behind me – all I could hear was the horse breathing. He was in a nice rhythm and I knew I wasn’t after going a million miles an hour, so I was imagining they were ignoring me a small bit. Aidan said to me in the morning, ‘He’s a horse that stays a mile and six for you, so be positive whatever you do.’”
McNamara’s previous winner was in October last year. “I’ve been saving myself,” he quipped. “Things are very tough in Ireland in terms of getting rides, but I’m at Aidan’s every morning of the week, so I am not going here, there and everywhere to ride out.”
When asked about having to spend 14 days in quarantine, he added: “I’d take 14 months of quarantine for this. I’ll be
OK – maybe I’ll watch replays of the race. I was lucky to get on this horse, there’s a thousand other lads that are more talented than me, but they didn’t ride Serpentine in the Derby today.”
A PERFECT STORM
RARELY have tactics been such a topic for discussion after a Derby since Shahrastani beat the latefinishing Dancing Brave in 1986. The winner this year was given too much rope and by the time the other jockeys realised, it was too late – or to quote jockey Oisin Murphy, it “looked like the bird had flown”.
But there were mitigating circumstances, a tactical “perfect storm” if you like for the winner, who was probably the best horse in the race anyway. In the earlier Oaks, which was won by Love
(see box, p49), two pacemakers had gone off a long way in front, softened each other up and slowed dramatically in the home straight. So this was fresh in the Derby jockeys’ minds, but the difference was that Serpentine’s lead in the Derby was uncontested.
On top of that, there were a few “chancers” in the race, which you might not have got in a normal Derby. Leading the rest of the pack, Khalifa Sat was flat to the boards and not able to take everyone else into the race. Those on doubtful stayers were never going to make that move, while English King had his own problems from his inside draw.
“Aidan filled
me with a huge amount of confidence”
JOCKEY EMMET MCNAMARA